Today we’re wishing our favorite musical redhead, Ed Sheeran, an incredibly happy 24th birthday. The ginger Brit has found our way into our hearts with his smooth, romantic sound— although he’s not the first musical carrot top that we’ve fallen irrepressibly in love with. Ever since Art Garfunkel and Daryl Hall were young men, we’ve held a soft spot for the orange haired troubadour. And when it comes to the ginger ladies, they’re not lacking in willful girl power: from Geri Halliwell to Annie Lennox to Neko Case to Shirley Manson to Tori Amos, red hair on a woman in music is synonymous with independence and power.

Madonna Disses Lady Gaga On Good Morning America
Beef alert! Watch in awe as Madonna coyly calls Lady Gaga “reductive.” This is why you don’t mess with the Queen Of Pop. [Idolator]

Spin Will Review This Year’s Music In 140 Characters Or LessSpin is doing something new and unorthodox, taking to Twitter to give album reviews in 140 characters or less for 2012. This will be an interesting experiment indeed — will they succeed in communicating their thoughts on complex albums in such short form? [NPR Music]

If you were anywhere on the Eastern seaboard in the last hour or so, you no doubt felt the effect of an earthquake that registered 5.9 on the Richter Scale. Here in Times Square at VH1 HQ, we felt the building sway and bounce uncomfortably for a good five or six seconds. Everyone seems to be okay, if a bit freaked out.

Miley Cyrus has been catchingsomeflak for her cover of Nirvana‘s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” Friday night in Ecuador. But the criticisms aren’t really about her rendition?which was not great, but not terrible, and let’s remember that the audio quality is pretty low?but about the difference between what “Smells Like Teen Spirit” means to Miley Cyrus and what it means to those who were alive when the song was recorded. Miley has said that Kurt Cobain is her “dream boyfriend” but there’s no indication that she sees much of a difference between him and, say, Bret Michaels, with whom she recorded an unreleased rendition of “Every Rose Has Its Thorn.”

And so what? News flash, Generation X: Kurt Cobain isn’t ours anymore. He entered the pop imagination almost twenty years ago. Learn to share. (At the same time, that doesn’t mean you have to like the covers.)

In that spirit, here are the ten most notable reimaginings of the classic Nirvana single, in chronological order. Classic? Misguided? Let us know what you think in the comments!

Tim‘s weighed in. Kanye‘s got an opinion. And now? Flame-haired piano humper Tori Amos has spoken out on the Britney debacle. At a September 11th concert in Melbourne, Australia, the singer coyly stated, “I have a comment…We’ve all seen it on the news,” remaining oblique enough that fans might have thought she would address the September 11th tragedies, but Amos had another tragedy in mind. She then launched into a brand new song about Britney Spears and the shambles her life has become. “Britney, they set you up/ But you drank from their cup,” Amos crooned, then sang “Well, maybe you?re a mother/ But you still need your mother.” Who knew Tori had a subscription to UsWeekly? Turns out this isn’t the first time Tori’s turned to celeb events for inspiration — she took a swipe at Lindsay Lohan in her song “I’m Not Stupid.”